Jean says her artistic career began at a very early age, when her parents finally said, “No, you can not have a horse!”
So, she drew horses, lots of horses and all the other critters that were around her small town home. She drew frogs and snakes from the garden, moths from the window screens on summer nights, fish from the little creek that ran through the neighbor’s wheat field and the little screech owl she found frozen one very cold winter morning. She says she has always been curious how nature works, how critters live their lives and how things are put together.
She studied at Eastern Michigan University; The School of the Art Institute Chicago; and University of Illinois School of Art and Design Chicago; where she received her bachelors of studio arts. In New Orleans she has taken master classes in figure drawing with Auseklis Ozols. She taught beginning and intermediate figure drawing at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts starting in the fall of 1994 until the fall of 1999. On the NOAFA faculty since 1994 Jean teaches beginning and intermediate drawing, painting with gouache and botanical illustration.
Jean began her work as an illustrator in 1970 with biology textbooks. She has over 60 titles in natural history books for young people, including Armies of Ants, Fabulous Frogs, Chameleons, Creepy Beetles, and Butterflies, all Scholastic Books for young readers; Swift as the Wind – the Cheetah, Orchard Books; Earthmates – poetry, Marshall Cavendish; Once I Knew a Spider, Walker&Co.; Lonesome George, the giant tortoise, recipient of the 2004 Giverny Award, Walker&Co., Groundhog Stays Up Late, Walker & Co. 2005
The Mysterious Collection of Dr. David Harleyson, Walker&Co., is Jean’s first book of fiction, and the first book she has written and illustrated. It has been awarded the Golden Kite Award by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, for the best illustrated picture book of 2004, and was juried into the Original Art, Society of Illustrators, New York , NY.
Represented by Timothy Travaglini .